


Tangled Memories

by Bladespeaker



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition - Freeform, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Solavellan Hell, Trespasser, Trespasser Spoilers, welp time to dive into my usual angst circles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-22 22:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23167969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bladespeaker/pseuds/Bladespeaker
Summary: Solas muses on his memories of the Inquisitor, recalling their relationship.
Relationships: Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan
Kudos: 5





	Tangled Memories

He can still remember when he first met her, the Mark burning on her hand. She was frightened then, as any reasonable person would be. Even she, a mage, should have never had to deal with the power that had seared itself into her hand. Nobody should have, he thinks, a mirthless grin twisting his thin lips as he walks through the Fade.   
Around him, his memories affect it, the ethereal plane twisting like water with the power of his thoughts alone. He stands now where he stood then, snow powdering the ground beneath his thin-soled shoes, and thinks of how her feet, clad in the half-off footwraps of the Dalish, must have been positively freezing. Adequate footwear was another minor mistake in the larger set that the scattered elven tribes had made, and a more forgivable one at that. He had taken her hand, small, burning with the green light of the Fade, his Anchor, and raised it high; she barely had time to question it, fingers outstretched as if on instinct as the magic in the rift snapped and echoed with what was bound to her, and she pulled it back together.

He absently runs his thumb over his palm, tracing the echo of her fingers, slender yet strong, now one more memory in the metaphysical plane. 

"What did you _do?"_ Her blue eyes were suspicious, snappish. There was a faint ring of hazel around her dark pupils; an ochre halo in a steel-blue sky. He remembers them, sharp, bright, and how he had brushed off his initial curiosity towards her as being the sole responsibility of the Mark. There were more pressing concerns at hand, he reminded himself, more duties that she could not be a part of, he thought with stern warning. Her hair was reddish-gold, shoulder-length and loosely-falling around her shoulders, and gleamed with a strange light in the green glow of the Breach above.

" _I_ did nothing. The credit is yours." Solas mouths the words to the memory on instinct, watching the past play before his eyes like a grand Orlesian drama. "It seems you hold the key to our salvation."

It was that memory she had walked in when they had first begun speaking on more topics which he had previously only shared with the spirits he called his companions. They spoke of the Fade, of spirits, of memories and dreams -- and he was shocked at her open-mindness. They didn't always agree -- Dalish perspectives on things were so stubbornly stuck in the past, in their _conceptions_ of the past -- and sometimes his attempts to broaden her horizons were stubbornly refused, taken as insult to a heritage she clutched to even if she didn't fully understand. Yet her eyes were no longer suspicious. In them he had watched curiosity blossom, interest grow, and something warmer, cautious but hopeful, growing bolder, as he told her tales of the past and of glorious battles.

He didn't want to admit he worried as more than a friend might when Haven had fallen and she with it. He had cursed the potential loss of the Anchor then, but her well-being had sprung to his mind first. 

He had told himself that her walking in on his own lucid dreams was the Anchor's power, but suspected that her own sleeping mind had somehow sought him out. She didn't understand what she was doing, how that sharp focus, like a knife, had begun to carve away the thousand-year-old barriers he had set around his heart. She had recalled their meeting at the Breach as easily as he; even now, Solas remembers the words she spoke that had ushered in his destruction, and hers, as well.

"I saw you, and I felt everything change." The remark had been half-thoughtless, innocently-made, easily brushed off. A part of him had hoped she would, and that he could resume ignoring the feelings that had stirred like dried leaves in the empty chamber of his heart, too-long absent from any attachments to things not of the Fade.

She had not been so merciful. In the world of dreams he could still remember her eyes widen, hear her breath catch, feel the breath in his own chest catch as she tilted her head towards him, stepping closer. "Felt everything change?" Her voice had been soft, hopeful, warm.

"A figure of speech," he had said quickly. He remembered half-willing his feet to move, to give her space, yet his heart rooted him in place as much as her searching blue eyes.

"I'm aware of the metaphor," she said. "I'm more interested in _felt."_

His voice had cracked; something in his heart, warm, trembling, was bleeding through. "You change everything."

He had sealed both of their fates, then. He could see it in the question she asked and answered herself, in the small smile she had given him. 

"Flatterer," she murmured, and took his chin in her hand and kissed him.

In that moment, his world shifted. She had turned back, a small, triumphant smile on her lips, a blush coloring her cheeks, and --

Solas draws back from the memory, still remembering the feeling of her hair through his fingers, her form, even in dreams, pressed to his, her not running, not fleeing, as he had kissed her back, returning her soft advance with one of his own. 

If he had loved her, truly, he would have left her then. Yet there was a power in her, through her, that he could not deny. At least, not until it was too late.

He remembers the Orlesian ball at Halamshiral, the cutting glances and hissed whispers behind fans and gilt masks. The Herald of Andraste -- a name given by the Inquisition she then led -- a shem name, she would say, rolling her eyes -- was a Dalish elf. A Dalish, elven _mage._ Solas had not physically attended a masquerade or gathering of that sort in an age, yet his walks through the Fade still let them remain fresh enough to let him feel sufficiently at-ease in the Grand Game that the Empire played. She, however, was clearly out of place. Her tattooed face with its swirling patterns, reminiscent of leaves, and her straightforward speech at first won her few allies. Yet she was a fast learner; he could see it in the way her brow furrowed, eyes sharp as steel as she gauged reactions to her words, stances, even the faintest inclinations.  
She eventually had walked from a gathering, disentangling herself from a trio of noblewomen with a faint smile of triumph. She had not been as out of place as she had seemed, he had realized, letting pride in her capabilities warm his heart as she relayed alliances gathered, information collected. He could barely remember anything else that had occurred beforehand, though, as in that one breathless moment, she had turned a faint pink, smile coy, and asked him for a dance later that evening. Her hair had been pulled into a bun; he could remember earlier that evening the slender fingers that had struggled with the style, and how she had wondered at his skill when he easily helped arrange it.  
She had given him a kiss, then, as gratitude. Unprompted, yet accepted with an ease that was becoming too close to his heart for the small corner in his mind that hissed at him about his _plans,_ about his _duty_ \--  
He had ignored it dutifully.

She had then frequently worn her hair in that same bun, that same simple style that accented the gentle curve of her delicate jaw, made her blue eyes sparkle and her rosy lips curve in an excited smile whenever she got closer to mastering it. A small part of him had mourned the loss of watching it flow through the air during her battles, a golden-copper cascade that flowed as her very form moved like water, casting her spells as she took up the crackling blade of the knight-enchanter. Yet every time, after battle, she would walk into his study where he would apply the brilliant paints in his style to the walls, showcasing her duties and that of the Inquistion, and she would reach up with a simple motion to unpin her hair and let it once more fall around her shoulders. He learned to be careful of what he was doing when she did that; it always mesmerized him, catching his breath. She had laughed when his unknowing hands had nearly painted a smear of ultramarine blue across his shaved head at the display and made some clever remark that barely brought him back to awareness.

Water. The Well of Sorrows. Solas returns from the memory of the study, of happier times, of her at the balcony, his fingers in her hair, her arms around his neck, and forces himself to remember the moment his duty had crystallized. She hadn't known the pain her tattoos had caused him, hadn't known their cruel truth until he spoke. He couldn't have expected her to be happy at the revelation, he knew -- that the vallaslin were slave markings, recalling a time when the Dalish had been no better than Tevinter. Her words, not his, but spoken with conviction through a choked voice. She had hesitated for a second when he offered to remove them. And then -- and then....  
He holds the memory in his mind, precious, her eyes deeper than any well, free from the influence that that of the Sorrows would have brought, as her skin was cleansed, the weaving tattoos like unknown chains broken from her face. He remembers his voice, his heart speaking, before the memory of Corypheyus in the temple had drawn around him like a cage, and forced his tongue to say words that he hates. She couldn't have known the truth. It would have killed her. So he instead had spoken a lie, a terrible, cutting, cruel lie, and become the Wolf that the legends painted him as.

She felt betrayed. He knew it then. He _had_ betrayed her. Yet he accepted his lot and moved forward.

She tried to speak of them only once, her hair around her shoulders, he at his desk, she across from him, eyes still full of tears and pain and confusion, embarassed now at the questions others were asking about her face.

He had refused. When he next saw her, her hair was in her bun, too tightly-pulled on her head, and her eyes were cold and distant. She had her duty, he consoled himself, refusing to release the emotions that surged in his heart. He had his. It was better that way.

Did someone else now run his fingers through her hair? he wonders. Was she still mourning him? Solas takes a deep breath, feeling the pain the thought brings him like a knife between his ribs, and tells himself to not be so foolish. If she had moved on, it would be for the betterment of both their sakes. She had told him before that she knew he enjoyed running his fingers through it, that she would cut it off rather than anyone else touch it as he had. A laughing memory made in happier times. They swarm him, warming, accusing, twisting his heart.

There is a sound behind him; the Qunari forces that had followed him into the Fade through the Evanuris were not fully defeated. He is weary of their attempts to kill him, and speaks to warn their blood-frenzied leader to turn back so that she may live; the stone statues that were her forces could tell of how well their attacks had gone.

He hears her pick up her spear to charge at him and lets the magic flow towards her with a sigh. She joins her brethren in unliving stone as easily as if she was always carved from it.

Another Evanuris stands before him; he steps forward to go towards it and pauses. An echo.

A mind like hers in the Fade. In the in-between there. Solas hears his name screamed in desperation, in hope, in raw pain, and turns.

The Anchor first catches his eye, but only for its brilliance, eating its way into her pale skin like the Blight. It will kill her, he knows, and he cannot meet her gaze when she turns it towards him.

Her hair is cut short.

The Dread Wolf sees his heart in front of him and kneels to her, feeling her rage and pain and betrayal as much as she had in those years past. Yet she still loves him.

_She still loves him._ He tells her of his plan. They butt heads as in the past, words sharp, hearts struggling, and he apologizes. She cannot see the duty in what she's done, the questions she has brought to light, for she is Real, and her realness throws everything else he had into doubt.

She will stop him, she says. She understands but cannot let him finish his plans. Tears stream down her face from pain, all-encompassing, shrouding her body, wracking her mind, breaking her heart again.

He stops the world for her to give them time. He wants her to show him another way, but he cannot see it.

The Dread Wolf bows his head towards her and she kisses him, a final sorrowing goodbye that tastes of tears, hers, his, mingling in duties that destroy them. He cannot tangle his fingers in her hair, but she does not run, does not pull away from him as his gauntlets, unfeeling metal, scrape gently against her scalp in her short-cut locks, and he mourns for the world that she lives in.

He saves her and leaves before she can convince him to stay. He is a coward, he knows, holding on to memories when she is something Real. Yet he cannot live with his mistakes, cannot take the luxury of living with her, being a new man, a new life. The Dread Wolf holds the Anchor in his hands and visits his heart only in dreams now. The world cannot wait.

Around him, the Fade bends, showing new paths, dangers and Blights and corruptions ahead, and his face grows grim. For the world to be saved, it must be purged. Some would call him a villain.   
For now, the Dread Wolf rises.


End file.
